Freud - Complete Works (762 page)

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4706

   If one is not aware of these
profound connections, it is impossible to find one’s way
about in the phantasies of human beings, in their associations,
influenced as they are by the unconscious, and in their symptomatic
language. Faeces - money - gift - baby - penis are treated there as
though they meant the same thing, and they are represented too by
the same symbols. Nor must you forget that I have only been able to
give you very incomplete information. I may hurriedly add, perhaps,
that interest in the vagina, which awakens later, is also
essentially of anal-erotic origin. This is not to be wondered at,
for the vagina itself, to borrow an apt phrase from Lou
Andreas-Salomé, is ‘taken on lease’ from the
rectum: in the life of homosexuals, who have failed to accomplish
some part of normal sexual development, the vagina is once more
represented by it. In dreams a locality often appears which was
earlier a simple room but is now divided into two by a wall, or the
other way round. This always means the relation of the vagina to
the bowel. It is also easy to follow the way in which in girls what
is an entirely unfeminine wish to possess a penis is normally
transformed into a wish for a baby, and then for a man as the
bearer of the penis and giver of the baby; so that here we can see
too how a portion of what was originally anal-erotic interest
obtains admission into the later genital organization.

   During our studies of the
pregenital phases of the libido we have also gained a few fresh
insights into the formation of character. We noticed a triad of
character-traits which are found together with fair regularity:
orderliness, parsimoniousness and obstinacy; and we inferred from
the analysis of people exhibiting these traits that they have
arisen from their anal erotism becoming absorbed and employed in a
different way. We therefore speak of an ‘anal
character’ in which we find this remarkable combination and
we draw a contrast to some extent between the anal character and
unmodified anal erotism. We also discovered a similar but perhaps
still firmer link between ambition and urethral erotism. A striking
allusion to this connection is to be seen in the legend that
Alexander the Great was born during the same night in which a
certain Herostratus set fire to the celebrated temple of Artemis at
Ephesus out of a sheer desire for fame. So the ancients would seem
not to have been unaware of the connection. You know, of course,
how much urination has to do with fire and extinguishing fire. We
naturally expect that other character traits as well will turn out
similarly to be precipitates or reaction-formations related to
particular pregenital libidinal structures; but we have not yet
been able to show this.

   It is now time, however, for me
to go back both in history and in my subject-matter and once more
to take up the most general problems of instinctual life. To begin
with, the opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual
instincts lay at the base of our libido theory. When later on we
began to study the ego itself more closely and arrived at the
conception of narcissism, this distinction itself lost its
foundation. In rare cases one can observe that the ego has taken
itself as an object and is behaving as though it were in love with
itself. Hence the term ‘narcissism’, borrowed from the
Greek myth. But that is only an extreme exaggeration of a normal
state of affairs. We came to understand that the ego is always the
main reservoir of libido, from which libidinal cathexes of objects
go out and into which they return again, while the major part of
this libido remains permanently in the ego. Thus ego-libido is
being constantly changed into object-libido and object-libido into
ego-libido. But in that case they could not be different in their
nature and it could have no sense to distinguish the energy of the
one from the energy of the other; we could either drop the term
‘libido’ or use it as synonymous with psychical energy
in general.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   We did not maintain this position
for long. Our feeling of their being a contrariety in instinctual
life soon found another and sharper expression. It is not my wish,
however, to put before you the origin of this novelty in the theory
of the instincts; it too is based essentially on biological
considerations. I shall offer it to you as a ready-made product.
Our hypothesis is that there are two essentially different classes
of instincts: the sexual instincts, understood in the widest sense
- Eros, if you prefer that name - and the aggressive instincts,
whose aim is destruction. When it is put to you like this, you will
scarcely regard it as a novelty. It looks like an attempt at a
theoretical transfiguration of the commonplace opposition between
loving and hating, which coincides, perhaps, with the other
polarity, of attraction and repulsion, which physics assumes in the
inorganic world. But it is a remarkable thing that this hypothesis
is nevertheless felt by many people as an innovation and, indeed,
as a most undesirable one which should be got rid of as quickly as
possible. I presume that a strong affective factor is coming into
effect in this rejection. Why have we ourselves needed such a long
time before we decided to recognize an aggressive instinct? Why did
we hesitate to make use, on behalf of our theory, of facts which
were obvious and familiar to everyone? We should probably have met
with little resistance if we had wanted to ascribe an instinct with
such an aim to animals. But to include it in the human constitution
appears sacrilegious; it contradicts too many religious
presumptions and social conventions. No, man must be naturally good
or at least good-natured. If he occasionally shows himself brutal,
violent or cruel, these are only passing disturbances of his
emotional life, for the most part provoked, or perhaps only
consequences of the inexpedient social regulations which he has
hitherto imposed on himself.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Unfortunately what history tells
us and what we ourselves have experienced does not speak in this
sense but rather justifies a judgement that belief in the
‘goodness’ of human nature is one of those evil
illusions by which mankind expect their lives to be beautified and
made easier while in reality they only cause damage. We need not
continue this controversy, since we have argued in favour of a
special aggressive and destructive instinct in men not on account
of the teachings of history or of our experience in life but on the
basis of general considerations to which we were led by examining
the phenomena of sadism and masochism. As you know, we call it
sadism when sexual satisfaction is linked to the condition of the
sexual object’s suffering pain, ill-treatment and
humiliation, and masochism when the need is felt of being the
ill-treated object oneself. As you know too, a certain admixture of
these two trends is included in normal sexual relations, and we
speak of perversions when they push the other sexual aims into the
background and replace them by their own aims. And you will
scarcely have failed to notice that sadism has a more intimate
relation with masculinity and masochism with femininity, as though
there were a secret kinship present; though I must add that we have
made no progress along that path. Both phenomena, sadism and
masochism alike, but masochism quite especially, present a truly
puzzling problem to the libido theory; and it is only proper if
what was a stumbling-block for the one theory should become the
cornerstone of the theory replacing it.

   It is our opinion, then, that in
sadism and in masochism we have before us two excellent examples of
a mixture of the two classes of instinct, of Eros and
aggressiveness; and we proceed to the hypothesis that this relation
is a model one - that every instinctual impulse that we can examine
consists of similar fusions or alloys of the two classes of
instinct. These fusions, of course, would be in the most varied
ratios. Thus the erotic instincts would introduce the multiplicity
of their sexual aims into the fusion, while the others would only
admit of mitigations or gradations in their monotonous trend. This
hypothesis opens a prospect to us of investigations which may some
day be of great importance for the understanding of pathological
processes. For fusions may also come apart, and we may expect that
functioning will be most gravely affected by defusions of such a
kind. But these conceptions are still too new; no one has yet tried
to apply them in our work.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4709

   Let us go back to the special
problem presented to us by masochism. If for a moment we leave its
erotic components on one side, it affords us a guarantee of the
existence of a trend that has self-destruction as its aim. If it is
true of the destructive instinct as well that the ego - but what we
have in mind here is rather the id, the whole person - originally
includes all the instinctual impulses, we are led to the view that
masochism is older than sadism, and that sadism is the destructive
instinct directed outwards, thus acquiring the characteristic of
aggressiveness. A certain amount of the original destructive
instinct may still remain in the interior. It seems that we can
only perceive it under two conditions: if it is combined with
erotic instincts into masochism or if - with a greater or lesser
erotic addition - it is directed against the external world as
aggressiveness. And now we are struck by the significance of the
possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find
satisfaction in the external world because it comes up against real
obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase
the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. We
shall hear how this is in fact what occurs and how important a
process this is. Impeded aggressiveness seems to involve a grave
injury. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy
some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in
order to guard against the impulsion to self-destruction. A sad
disclosure indeed for the moralist!

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   But the moralist will console
himself for a long time to come with the improbability of our
speculations. A queer instinct indeed, directed to the destruction
of its own organic home! Poets, it is true, talk of such things;
but poets are irresponsible people and enjoy the privilege of
poetic licence. Incidentally, such ideas are not foreign even to
physiology: consider the notion, for instance, of the mucous
membrane of the stomach digesting itself. It must be admitted,
however, that our self-destructive instinct calls for support on a
wider basis. One cannot, after all, venture on a hypothesis of such
a wide range merely because a few poor fools have linked their
sexual satisfaction to a peculiar condition. A more profound study
of the instincts will, I believe, give us what we need. The
instincts rule not only mental but also vegetative life, and these
organic instincts exhibit a characteristic which deserves our
deepest interest. (We shall not be able to judge until later
whether it is a general characteristic of instincts.) For they
reveal an effort to restore an earlier state of things. We may
suppose that from the moment at which a state of things that has
once been attained is upset, an instinct arises to create it afresh
and brings about phenomena which we can describe as a
‘compulsion to repeat’. Thus the whole of embryology is
an example of the compulsion to repeat. A power of regenerating
lost organs extends far up into the animal kingdom, and the
instinct for recovery to which, alongside of therapeutic
assistance, our cures are due must be the residue of this capacity
which is so enormously developed in the lower animals. The spawning
migrations of fishes, the migratory flights of birds, and possibly
all that we describe as manifestations of instinct in animals, take
place under the orders of the compulsion to repeat, which expresses
the
conservative nature
of the instincts. Nor have we far to
look in the mental field for its manifestations. We have been
struck by the fact that the forgotten and repressed experiences of
childhood are reproduced during the work of analysis in dreams and
reactions, particularly in those occurring in the transference,
although their revival runs counter to the interest of the pleasure
principle; and we have explained this by supposing that in these
cases a compulsion to repeat is overcoming even the pleasure
principle. Outside analysis, too, something similar can be
observed. There are people in whose lives the same reactions are
perpetually being repeated uncorrected, to their own detriment, or
others who seem to be pursued by a relentless fate, though closer
investigation teaches us that they are unwittingly bringing this
fate on themselves. In such cases we attribute a
‘daemonic’ character to the compulsion to repeat.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   But how can this conservative
characteristic of instincts help us to understand our
self-destructiveness? What earlier state of things does an instinct
such as this want to restore? Well, the answer is not far to seek
and opens wide perspectives. If it is true that - at some
immeasurably remote time and in a manner we cannot conceive - life
once proceeded out of inorganic matter, then, according to our
presumption, an instinct must have arisen which sought to do away
with life once more and to re-establish the inorganic state. If we
recognize in this instinct the self-destructiveness of our
hypothesis, we may regard the self-destructiveness as an expression
of a ‘death instinct’ which cannot fail to be present
in every vital process. And now the instincts that we believe in
divide themselves into two groups - the erotic instincts, which
seek to combine more and more living substance into ever greater
unities, and the death instincts, which oppose this effort and lead
what is living back into an inorganic state. From the concurrent
and opposing action of these two proceed the phenomena of life
which are brought to an end by death.